Sweeney’s Revival: Translating and transcending the liminal

This study aims to uncover the traces of the celebrated Sweeney legend in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Irish writers such as James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Austin Clarke, Derek Mahon, Tom Mac Intyre, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Dermot Bolger, Paula Meehan, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The tale, known in Irish as Buile Suibhne, captivates with its intricate layers of liminality. Liminality, the state of existing on the boundary, the border, the threshold, serves as the key to bringing these writers together. This liminal state is marked by the promise of a drastic shift, a metamorphosis of being. The legend’s profound impact on literary creations bears witness to the contemplation of liminality lying at the heart of the Irish imagination. Close textual readings bring to light the significance of Sweeney’s Revival, which reverberates with far-reaching and enduring resonance.

Hiroko Ikeda is Professor in the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. She coedited IrishLiterature in the British Context and Beyond: New Perspectives from Kyoto (2020), which includes her essay ’Beyond being Irish or Celtic: The Double Vision of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s «Cailleach/Hag» in Feis’.